L. A. TAYLOR – Only Half a Hoax.

Walker; paperback reprint, 1986; hardcover edition, 1983.

   First of all, let me say it is about time [1987] Walker started reprinting some of their American detective fiction in paperback. In the past four or five years Walker seems to have come from nowhere to become of one of the leading publishers of hardcover mysteries, most of which seems to have been ignored by other paperback companies.

   (They have been reprinting their British mystery fiction in paper for several years now, but for the most part, I find myself too easily bored with the general run of “thriller” this entails.)

   I also have to say that I’m glad they chose to include the Taylor books in their first batch of releases. (His/her second book, Deadly Objectives, is also now out.) I have to confess that I had the chance to pick this one earlier in hardcover, and I turned up my nose at the chance. I mean, after all, a detective whose hobby is chasing down reports of UFO’s in the Minneapolis area?

   No offense intended to Minneapolitans. I’m sure it must be a terrific place to live, in spite of the comments of J. J. Jamison (the aforementioned detective) sometimes to the contrary. But flying saucers and detective fiction seems such an incongruous combination, I couldn’t imagine myself reading such balderdash, much less enjoying it.

   But enjoy this book, I did. Even though J. J. (his full-time job a computer engineer) is pretty much a naive sort of neophyte at the detective business, the case he enters into is breezily told, and is easily recognized as a throwback to the wacky cases of homicide that were exceedingly popular back in the 1940s.

   And reflecting back on it now, the plot doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If you’re planning a murder, why should your first impulse be to set up an elaborate fake UFO in order to draw attention away from the act you’re about to do?

   When J. J. investigates and finds the body, he’s first suspected of complicity, then becomes the killer’s target. Chronologically: (1) his brakes are tampered with, (2) he is nearly run down while bike riding, (3) his house is set on fire, and (4) he is dumped in the tiger cage of the Minnesota Zoo. Maybe I missed one.

   The point of all this is to keep the reader’s mind off the fact that there really are very few suspects, and the clues are a little too obvious to withstand direct attention. It takes the last ten pages to wrap everything up is well, which is far too long for a mystery properly told. Even in the 40s, though it took time to make the illogical satisfactorily plausible.

   In spite of my earlier comments, Taylor does well at this sort of thing, and throws in a little bit of surprise to boot.

[UPDATE] 08-15-08. Several things are clear from this review, reading through it this evening for the first time myself in over eleven years. First of all, and most importantly, it is clear that I did not know whether or not L. A. Taylor was male or female. It is much easier to answer questions like this now, what with the Internet, and the handy assist of Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV:

TAYLOR, L. A. [Laurie Aylama Taylor Sparer]. 1939-1996. Series character: JJ = J. J. Jamison

      Footnote to Murder. Walker 1983.   JJ

      Only Half a Hoax. Walker 1983.   JJ
      Deadly Objectives. Walker 1984.   JJ
      Shed Light on Death. Walker 1985.   JJ

      Love of Money. Walker.   1986
      Poetic Justice. Walker.   1988

      A Murder Waiting to Happen. Walker 1989.   JJ   [set at a Minnesota SF convention]

   Besides the mysteries listed above, she also wrote Blossom of Erda, a science fiction novel; Cat’s Paw, a fantasy; and (possibly) Women’s Work a collection of both SF and fantasy. (I’ve not yet found confirmation that the latter was ever published.)

   It therefore now comes as no great surprise to find the SFnal elements that are so obviously present in Only Half a Hoax. As you’ve read, I found them semi- objectionable in 1986. I’d like to think I’d find them less so now.

   After her death Ms. Taylor’s husband had her final novel published: The Fathergod Experiment, described online as “a quirky, complex, interesting tale that combines court intrigue with mysteries both scientific and criminal, and a thoroughly satisfying story of an orphan rising from obscurity and oppression.”

   I’ve forwarded a more complete description to Al. It appears that the books ought to be included in CFIV, at least marginally. (Added later: He agrees. The book will appear in Part 29 of the online Addenda.)

   Also of note in the review, at least to me, was my mammoth snobbish putdown of British thriller fiction. You can blame my younger self for that, but not this present fellow who I am now.

ROGER L. SIMON – California Roll.

Warner, paperback reprint; 1st pr., June 1986. Hardcover edition: Villard, March 1985. Trade paperback: I Books, Jan 2001.

   I think what I will do is to quote private eye Moses Wine in his own words. The first three paragraphs of California Roll will do as much to set the stage as anything that I could say:

   Moses was, as far as I have been able to determine, the first counter-cultural PI in the books, starting out as a pot-smoking California hippie detective in 1973 and having a whole career of life-altering adventures from that point on, but always the same person, always with new problems, or so his books have been described to me. (I’m relying here on some of the comments I found after a quick Google through the Internet, with (as usual) Kevin Burton Smith at thrillingdetective.com having the most concise but illuminating things to say.)

   Here’s the entire list of Moses Wine adventures. I’ve read only two of them, I’m sorry to say.

The Big Fix. Straight Arrow, trade pb, 1973.
   Andre Deutsch, hc, UK, 1974.
   Pocket, pb, March 1974.
   Pocket, pb, September 1978.
   Warner, pb, July 1984.
   I Books, trade pb, July 2000.

Wild Turkey. Straight Arrow, hc, 1974.
   Pocket, pb, February 1976.
   Warner, pb, September 1984.
   I Books, trade pb, July 2000.

Peking Duck. Simon & Schuster, hc, June 1979.
   Detective Book Club, reprint hc, 3-in-1 volume, Sept-Oct 1979.
   Warner, pb, September 1987.
   I Books, trade pb, November 2000.

California Roll. Villard, hc, March 1985.
   Warner, pb, June 1986.
   I Books, trade pb, January 2001.

The Straight Man. Villard, hc, September 1986.
   Warner, pb, October 1987.
   I Books, trade pb, June 2001.

Raising the Dead. Villard, hc, July 1988.
   Warner, pb, August 1989.

The Lost Coast. Harpercollins, hc, 1997.
   I Books, trade pb, March 2000.
   I Books, hc, May 2003.

Director’s Cut. Atria, hc, June 2003.
   I Books, trade pb, December 2005. [Scheduled but possibly never published.]

   Getting back to California Roll, however, and as you can probably imagine, the match-up of Moses Wine with corporate California — the computer business in its early stages — does not go well. There is a parallel theme, not thinly disguised, in the fact that Alex Wiznitsky (aka The Wiz), the head of Tulip (not Apple), newly worth $234,000,000 and who hires Moses to be the new head of security — he also finds that immense, immeasurable wealth is not what it is cracked up to be. He, the Wiz, would rather be, one feels, back in his garage tinkering around on his own.

   He, the Wiz, also says, on page 13, “They’re t-trying to take the company away from me, Moses.”

   I don’t think the plot of the mystery adventure novel that follows makes a whole lot of sense, although it certainly follows the usual path of a private eye novel in practice, although with a sense that the latter is not entirely the sort of story Mr. Simon intended to tell.

   Characters come on stage to amuse and entertain us for a while, and then they are seemingly jettisoned when the story verves off in another direction — to Japan, say, for several chapters — and then back again to California.

   One excellent creation along these lines is Mr. Hodaka, a translator Moses hires in Japan who turns out also to be the writer of Japanese pulp detective stories and who eagerly finds the opportunity to be of assistance to Moses along those lines to be very exciting, along with his fellow members in the Maltese Falcon society. A girl named Laura Suzuki, on the other hand, whom Moses makes love to on page 62 (in brief but explicit detail), finds her role in the story (later on) much less to her liking.

   On page 170 is a sort of semi-capsule summary: “… it was a two-tiered game … being played out on one level by large corporate entities and nation-states and on another by human beings struggling desperately for survival in this sad vale of tears.”

   Which, if nothing else I’ve said so far, may give you an inkling of where either the book succeeds or fails. Or if it does not, here is another take on the book’s intentions — and ordinarily I perhaps should not do this, which is to quote the last two lines of the book (or that is to say, to quote a quote from Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai) — but if you were paying attention up above, there’s nothing in this that will surprise you, not an iota:

LINDA FRENCH – Coffee to Die For.

Avon, paperback original. First printing, December 1998.

   Linda French is the author’s maiden name, and this is second of three mystery novels she wrote under this byline. All of them take place in the northwestern corner of Washington state, with the leading character in each of them being Teodora “Teddy” Morelli, a history professor who lives in Bellingham. According to Google is about 85 miles north of Seattle, which is where most of Coffee to Die For takes place.

   Not so coincidentally, according to Amazon, Linda French is a history professor who lives in Bellingham, Washington.

   Based on her entry the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, here’s a list of her mystery fiction in book form:

FRENCH, LINDA. Pseudonym of Linda Mariz, 1948-
      * Talking Rain. Avon, pbo, April 1998.

      * Coffee to Die For. Avon, pbo, Dec 1998.
      * Steeped in Murder. Avon, pbo, Dec 1999.

   Under her married name, Ms. French also wrote the following pair of mysteries:

MARIZ, LINDA (Catherine French) 1948- . Pseudonym: Linda French.
      * Body English. Bantam, pbo, Feb 1992.

      * Snake Dance. Bantam, pbo, Aug 1992.

   Anthropologist Laura Ireland, who’s also based in Washington state, is featured in both of these, although the second one takes place in Louisiana’s Cajun country. (She’s also a tall championship volleyball player, while Teddy Morelli is short, maybe five foot three.)

   Of the five, Coffee to Die For is the only one I’ve read, and while one should never say “never,” all things considered, I’m not likely to read another, or at least not right away.

   It’s not that it’s badly written, mind you, for it’s not. It’s not, shall we say, my cup of naturally flavored chocolate coffee. In fact, I suspected this from the very first paragraph, which I will quote:

   How cozier could you get than a mystery full of woolen bunnies?

   Dead, eventually, is Daisy’s philandering husband Leo, a scientist who (a) has recently developed the aforementioned naturally flavored chocolate coffee plant, and (b) has even more recently given himself a present in the form of a young, new (and beautiful) lab assistant by the name of Molly Thistle.

   When he’s found murdered in his laboratory office, no one sheds a tear. Teddy and Dolly assume that Molly did it, only to discover that she has an unbreakable alibi. It is not known whom the police suspect, unless it is Daisy, since they are visible on the scene for a maximum of seven pages out of 210 in all.

   Which means that the percentage of professional police participation is just over 3%. I’ve heard of low-carb diets, but this is far too low for me.

   The rest of the book is filled with Teddy’s extended family and circle of friends, along with some goons with whom Leo was partner’s with in some sort of cannabis deal, now gone bad. Among the circle of friends, by the way, is Teddy’s ex-husband Aurie Scholl, a knee surgeon who works with the Seahawks, who’s hoping they can get back together sometime.

   Four out of five reviewers on Amazon left positive comments, but keeping in mind that I’m not a member of the target audience for books like this, I need something more solid to chew on.

   It’s been a while since I’ve uploaded another page to the ongoing Addenda to Al Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, but Part 28 is up and running as of 10 minutes ago.

   The first link will take you to the main page, where I’d recommend you go if you’re a first time visitor. The second link goes directly to the new material, to which I have not yet added any of my usual enhancements — links, cover images, and added biographical information — but which I will as time goes on.

   There are no major pockets of interest, only a steady accumulation of new data, additions and corrections both. Part 29 will be along shortly, Al promises, as he’s been working on both Parts 28 and 29 more or less at the same time. And as usual, when it does appear, you’ll read about it here first!

IAN MACKINTOSH – A Drug Called Power.

Robert Hale; UK, hardcover, 1968.

   Author and TV writer-producer Ian Mackintosh has come up three time already on this blog. The first instance was in a posting of some addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, in which some biographical data was given for the author, and adding the setting of a novelization he did of the British TV show The Sandbaggers.

   This was followed by an email posting from Tise Vahimagi that included some data about some of the other TV shows Mackintosh was involved with. A few days later a post from British mystery bookseller Jamie Sturgeon appeared; in this the spelling of the author’s last name was discussed and possibly even settled.

   I don’t have the autographed copy of A Drug Called Power that was illustrated in that latter post. What I have is a much less valuable one formerly belonging to a library somewhere in the UK. (Well, to be precise, it’s the City of London Police Library, whatever that might mean.)

   And I wish I could recommend it to you, but I can’t. Not at least without a whole lot of reservations, that is, and eventually I will tell you about some of them. It’s the second in a series of three high-intensity action thrillers involving Tim Blackgrove, apparently a private eye in the first of his adventures (see below), but that seems to have had a bad ending (involving a woman he loved), and he’s turned into anti-narcotics vigilante by the time the second one has begun.

   The books:    [Data taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

BLACKGROVE, TIM
       A Slaying in September (n.) Hale 1967 [Antwerp, Belgium]
       A Drug Called Power (n.) Hale 1968 [with Sue Dell; Scotland]
       The Brave Cannot Yield (n.) Hale 1970 [with Sue Dell; Scotland]

   Let me explain about Sue Dell, if I may (and if I can). As I said above, Blackgrove is a single-minded and totally ruthless vigilante of the Donald Pendleton–Marc “The Executioner” Bolan type, about 30, and in the prologue he meets a 19-year-old girl, Sue Dell, whom he makes his partner. Their relationship is chaste, for all I could tell, but (and I’ll get back to this) extremely violent (not toward each other, I hasten to add).

   As partners in their two-person anti-crime squad, they are extremely successful, calling themselves the Trans-World Independent Narcotics Squad (T.W.I.N.S.). Maybe that tells you something about the general level the book’s written on already.

   Although things are cheerfully working out very well on their own, when MI5 comes calling, they accept the employment, the challenge, and the change to save not only England but the world from a new Mastermind of Crime, complete with deadly poisons with which to blackmail the capitals of Europe into submission, one by one.

   That’s about all of the plot I need to tell you, I suppose, and the story is told in a Gosh Wow (i.e., semi-corny) sort of way that television shows used be conducted back in the 1960s and 70, except for one thing: the level of violence, and the lack of compunction in killing and maiming for life, left and right. This is both the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, mind you, including the 19-year-old, five foot two and beautiful Sue Dell.

   Take for example, the events at and around page 100, and judge for yourself. The wife of an opposing drug dealer is dowsed with oil, set on fire with a flame-thrower, and they watch as her body curls up in a blackened crisp. The drug dealer himself? Dumped into a vat of acid, with his head propped up to made sure it stays above the …

   Forget it. That’s enough, even though the book does improve from here on in. (I skimmed a lot, just so that I could tell you this, assuming that like me, you’d want to know.) What I don’t know is what kind of person this book was written for, but it isn’t me, nor was it ever.

   Nor is there any warning on the jacket about the sadistic sort of violence-oriented pornography that awaits the unwary reader inside. When you buy an Executioner novel, for example, you know exactly what you’re paying for.

   So be forewarned, that’s all I say. After an investment of 100 pages, there was enough of interest for me to finish A Drug Called Power, albeit very quickly, and the two starring characters were intriguing enough that reading the next one in the series is not entirely out of the question, just to see what happens to them, should one turn up. Don’t take even this small glimmer of positivity as a recommendation, though. I’d rather not take the responsibility.

       >>>

   Other crime fiction by IAN MACKINTOSH, excluding the TV tie-in’s covered in earlier posts:

      Count Not the Cost (n.) Hale 1968 [England; Hong Kong]

      The Man from Destiny (n.) Hale 1969 [Hong Kong]

   PS. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon for providing the cover images.

[UPDATE] 02-24-09.   One last cover image, this one sent me once again by Jamie Sturgeon. Other than the TV novelizations, this constitutes a complete cover gallery of Ian Mackintosh’s crime novels, five in all.

S. F. X. DEAN – Such Pretty Toys.

Tor, paperback reprint; 1st printing, Oct 1986. Hardcover edition: Walker. 1982. Trade paperback: Felony & Mayhem, 2007 (shown).

   So, what’s the word I want? Synchronicity? What are the odds that any two mysteries you happen to pick up, one after the other, would both take place in Sante Fe, New Mexico? (Not unless you were trying, that is.)

   And listen to this. The woman who sells Professor Neil Kelly his bus ticket believes that Sante Fe is inhabited solely by “Indians and psychiatrists and other divorced women.” She’d either just been there, or else she’d just finished reading the same book I just did.

   [NOTE: This preceding book was False Impressions, by Karin Berne, in which divorced Elllie Gordon solves a murder while visiting Sante Fe. You can find my review here.]

   Actually Kelly takes the bus only from Albuquerque, there being no direct flights from Boston. If you haven’t read his first adventure, By Frequent Anguish, you wouldn’t know that Professor Kelly is an English teacher at Old Hampton College, apparently a fictionalized version of a school like Smith, Amherst or Hampshire — or perhaps a conglomerate version of all of them. In that earlier book, Kelly solved the murder of a student he was about to marry, and not surprisingly, I found it a fairly gloomy affair.

   In this one, following close upon the heels of the first, the dead girl’s father is murdered and the mother blinded in an explosion, one apparently aimed at the latter, a part-time CIA agent. The trail leads to a half-sister in New Mexico, which is where Sante Fe comes in, as well as assorted FBI and CIA agents, not all on the same side, for some reason.

   The difference in tone between this book and the False Impressions is enormous. In the earlier novel, murder is posed primarily as a puzzle to be solved. In Such Pretty Toys murder is easily seen to be the crisis and tragedy it really is, rather than existing as the focal point of a work whose only purpose is entertainment.

   I am bothered by this, but both approaches are undeniably valid ones. Both are are not only accepted but taken for granted in mystery fiction. Personally, I lean toward Dean’s approach. In the two cases at hand, I think his is overall the better book, and yet I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the Berne book as well.

   In terms of demonstrating the tensions and personal anguish that a murder in the family should arouse, however, Professor Kelly’s venture into the real world of espionage and world-wide intrigue is also the more honest of the two, by far.

   But I also think that Dean might have chosen another family for tragedy to strike. The point kept bothering me, throughout the book, that the Laceys have been through quite enough, thank you. This time around, why not someone else?

[UPDATE] 07-25-08.   I don’t know if the term “cozy mystery” was in wide usage back in 1987, but perhaps not, otherwise I might have used it to describe False Impressions, which I used in strong contrast to Such Pretty Toys. I’m on better terms with the sub-genre of cozies now than I was back then, as long as they take death as a serious matter. (Some don’t, but hopefully only a few. One I remember most distinctly — and with much distaste — was one in which the lady sleuth whispers and giggles with her male friend all through the victim’s funeral service. I read no further.)

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA.   Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. Series character: Prof. Neil Kelly, in all:

DEAN, S. F. X. Pseudonym of Francis D. Smith, ca.1926- .
    * By Frequent Anguish (n.) Walker 1982 [Academia; Massachusetts]
    * Such Pretty Toys (n.) Walker 1982 [New Mexico]
    * Ceremony of Innocence (n.) Walker 1984 [England]

    * It Can’t Be My Grave (n.) Walker 1984 [England]
    * Death and the Mad Heroine (n.) Walker 1985 [Massachusetts]
    * Nantucket Soap Opera (n.) Atheneum 1987 [Nantucket]

   Said Newgate Callendar in a New York Times review of Ceremony of Innocence (15 July 1984):   “S. F. X. Dean, whose real name is Francis Smith, is a professor of humanities at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. He concentrated in Chinese studies at Harvard and during World War II was a weather analyst in the Pacific for the Navy.”

[FURTHER COMMENT] 07-26-08.   It has belatedly occurred to me to describe what I call a cozy mystery. A definition on Wikipedia summarizes my own thoughts very well, if not quite exactly: “‘Cozy mysteries’ began in the late 20th century as a reinvention of the Golden Age whodunnit; these novels generally shy away from violence and suspense and frequently feature female amateur detectives. Modern cozy mysteries are frequently, though not necessarily in either case, humorous and thematic (culinary mystery, animal mystery, quilting mystery, etc.).”

   I do not think of Golden Age puzzle mysteries as cozies. Agatha Christie is NOT a cozy mystery writer. If I were to add to the Wiki definition, I would include a phrase to the effect that large chunks of cozy mysteries are taken up with the personal relationships and interactions between the characters, their families, their friends and fellow hobbyists, but with such relationships having nothing to do with the causes of the crime or the solving of the crime, nor are they in any way a consequence of the crime, except in the most incidental fashion.

   Current-day cozies can very well include a puzzle plot approach to solving the crime. As the Wiki definition says, and I hadn’t thought of this in so many words, the current cozies are a “reinvention of the Golden Age whodunnit.” But the way cozies become flawed — or even fail, in my opinion — is by either including too much non-crime related material, or (as in the example I mentioned above) by not taking the process of solving the crime seriously enough.

   And to be truthful, even though (and especially because) I was the one to bring it up in the first place, I can’t tell you whether or not False Impressions actually is a cozy. I’d have to read it again to be sure. From the review, it sounds as though it might be, but since I also admired the puzzle aspect, if it is, then it’s one of the good ones.

WILL CREED – Death Wears a Green Hat.

Five Star Mystery #42; digest-sized paperback original; 1st printing, 1946.

   Not too much is known about Will Creed, except that his real name was William Long (1922- ) and besides the two paperback originals he wrote for Five Star in 1946, he also wrote four more as by Peter Yates for Vulcan and Five Star in 1945. Vulcan was a publisher similar to Five Star Mysteries, so similar in fact, that I’ve compiled provisional checklists for both outfits and made them available online here.  [Note: See also the UPDATE below.]

   I do like the both the title and the cover of this one, and yes, a green hat figures prominently in the mystery, and I’ll get to it in a minute. Telling the story is a Manhattan-based advertising agency executive named Hal Boyd. Dead is his apartment mate and his best friend, Adrian Clay, a gossip columnist well-known around town.

   Where things get interesting is that Boyd’s hat, a midnight-blue homburg is evidently a clue, because it is missing and nowhere to be found until it turns up mysteriously later in his bedroom, but green instead of blue!

   Forgive the exclamation point, but that’s purely reflective of Will Creed’s style of writing. Pulp authors often wrote in the same vein, supplying artificial suspense or amazement when they couldn’t take the time (or weren’t able) to manufacture it on their own. I’ll have more to say about this later, and what it meant to me while I was reading the story, but at the moment, let’s reflect a little bit about hats, and what they mean in today’s world, as opposed to the mid-1940s… Who knows today the difference, say, between a fedora and a homburg? Derbies, OK, and panama hats, sure, but mention the names of any other styles, and you may as well be speaking Martian.

   Inspector Day, whom Hal Boyd becomes friendly with (at least to a certain degree) and who allows Boyd to confer with him about large segments of his investigations — thinks hats are important too. Allow me to quote the inspector from his conversation with Boyd on page 34:

   Boyd thinks of the inspector as rather an intelligent fuddy-duddy, but the inveterate mystery reader knows better. The hat is important, essential, crucial and/or all of the above. The mistake I made, reference above, is underestimating Will Creed as a mystery writer.

   He may have had a pulpish, somewhat clumsy, gee-whiz style that lacks the push, the elan and/or the drive it needs to survive on its own, but he also had exactly the right instincts, Agatha Christie-like, to make the plot swivel and turn on a nickel and four pennies — or in other words, wow, I didn’t see that coming! — but without the knack of pulling it off with Christie’s ease and confidence that I really, really wish that Creed had had at his command.

   Or maybe he did and I’m just yapping because he fooled the socks off me, no lie. I’m going to have to go back and read it again — and if that isn’t a sure sign of a magician at work, no matter what level of expertise, I sure as shinola don’t know what is.

   
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA. Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

CREED, WILL. Pseudonym of William Long, (1922- ); other pseudonym: Peter Yates.

      Death Comes Grinning. Five Star #47, US, digest pb, 1946.
      Death Wears a Green Hat. Five Star #42, US, digest pb, 1946.

YATES, PETER Pseudonym of William Long, (1922- ); other pseudonym: Will Creed.

      Curtain Call for Murder. Vulcan #6, US, digest pb, 1945. SC: Thatcher family.
      Death Comes to Dinner. Five Star #4, US, digest pb, 1945. SC: Thatcher family.

      Death in the Hands of Talent. Five Star #7, US, digest pb, 1945. SC: Sandy Blunt.
      The Dress Circle Murders. Five Star #1, digest pb, 1945. SC: Sandy Blunt.

[UPDATE] 07-23-08.   I never did finish that article on Vulcan and Five Star Mysteries, although Victor Berch and I did manage to accumulate a lot of information and material toward doing so.

   It took Ken Johnson to carry on independently and without me, and it’s his Vintage Digests website that you should be checking out, not mine. Follow the link in the line before, and scroll down to either Five Star or Vulcan.

   He doesn’t include many cover images on his site, however. For those, you’ll have to go to the primary Bookscans website. For the Five Star, go here, and you can find some of the Vulcans here.

MELVIN L. SEVERY – The Darrow Enigma. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1904. Grant Richards, UK, hardcover, 1904. Copp Clark, Canada, hardcover, 1904 (the cover of this edition is the one shown below).

   The Darrow Enigma is narrated by an unnamed doctor, consulted by chemist and lawyer George Maitland for a bit of a nerve tonic. They become friends, for the narrator is greatly interested in science, and it is through this friendship that our anonymous physician becomes involved in the case.

   Ultimately Maitland confesses the real reason he visited the medical man is because he is the Darrow family’s physician, and Maitland has fallen for Gwen, daughter of the house, and wishes to be introduced. Needless to say Gwen is beautiful even though, whisper it quietly, she does not imprison herself in corsetry.

   Well, then, an introduction to the young lady is effected and it is while the two friends are visiting the Darrow household and Gwen is appropriately singing “In The Gloaming” as dusk falls when her father John clutches his throat, cries out he has been murdered, and dies.

   Yet there is nobody in the room other than the Darrows, Maitland and the doctor, and two other visitors. How then was it done?

   The doors into the room were closed or locked, the only open window was perhaps six inches ajar and locked in that position and John Darrow was sitting in a high-backed chair over eight feet from it in any case, plus there were no niches or cupboards or curtains behind which the unseen assassin could hide.

   Or was it suicide? Either way what was the weapon and where has it gone? To find out the police bring in three investigators: Mr. Osborne, Mr. Allen, and French-born Louis Godin, now reportedly the best detective in the U.S.

   And so begins a tale with a dab of woo woo and a touch of gothic. John Darrow had had dreams foretelling he would be murdered, as a result of which Gwen makes him a certain promise that will later cause romantic havoc.

   It is established there’s a connection to India long ago — though it is nothing to do with gems stolen from Indian temples — and Maitland steams off to pursue investigations there. After that he is off to San Francisco to find and interview a couple of Darrow’s former servants, who are Chinese and so, we might say, automatically suspect.

   There follows a series of Strange Coincidences involving Anthony and Cleopatra, leading to what can only be described as a brilliant piece of deductive reasoning — involving reading detective novels! — that puts them on the track of certain parties of interest.

   The culprit is brought to trial but is it the right person? Was the murder committed by the bizarre method the man on trial describes? What about the motive?

My verdict: First, the method employed is one that fits a clue hidden in the text, though I must say that more clues are needed so the reader can deduce the culprit. There are red herrings and side trips and everything seems to fit together very well until the final confrontation in the court room when the entire case is turned upside down.

   Thus The Darrow Enigma is a bit of a mixture, though unlike the proverbial curate’s egg, on balance I would give it a nod rather than a frown since, despite the weakness mentioned, I found this novel enjoyable enough and the weapon utilised so outrageous and yet simple that points must be awarded on that alone!

   In an aside, I was intrigued by Severy’s description of the eavesdropping device employed at an important point and consulted an electrical engineer about it. He said theoretically it was possible but the technology was not up to it at the time.

   However, invention of this gizmo is not surprising as Severy held at least 90 patents. His fictional bugging device involves a piece of burnished silver fastened to a diaphragm, a small beam of light trained on the silver being reflected onto a sensitised moving tape photographically registering movement of the diaphragm for later conversion to an ordinary record.

   Needless to say the result is a vital piece of evidence.

      Etext: http://www.freeread.com.au/ebooks/c00040.txt

[BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA] Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

SEVERY, MELVIN L(inwood) (1863-?)
      The Darrow Enigma (Dodd, 1904, hc) [George Maitland; Boston, MA] Richards, 1904.
      -Fleur-de-Lis and other stories (Boston, MA: Esoteric, 1889, hc)
      Maitland’s Master Mystery (Ball, 1912, hc) [George Maitland]
      The Mystery of June 13 (Dodd, 1905, hc) [George Maitland] Stevens, 1905.

[UPDATE] 07-23-08.  Here’s an email I received from Victor Berch this afternoon:

  Steve:

  On your blog, there was an entry for Melvin Linwood Severy taken from CFIV as 1863-?.

  I’m assuming that by now Al may have his death date and other tidbits about him. But just in case,he was born in Melrose, MA Aug. 5, 1863 and died in CA on Oct. 12, 1951. He was an engineer, musician, an inventor and author. He was married to Elizabeth Ann Flint, born in Jackson, MO.

  Most of this was verified on his passport application for travel abroad. Google has lots to say about him as an inventor. (Follow the link for one such page.)

   In case you’ve been wondering, I haven’t had much time in recent weeks to work on the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, and I’ll have to see if I can’t do something about it. (Al supplies the basic data; I add the short biographies, images and links.) This grouping of newest entries is based on books in my own collection, and will be appearing soon in Part 29 of the Addenda.

ANTHONY, EVELYN. Pseudonym of Evelyn Bridget Patricia Ward-Thomas, 1928- . Born in London, England; married Michael Ward-Thomas, 1955. Author of many historical romances early in her career before turning to romantic suspense. Some 25 books falling into the latter category are included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

      The Doll’s House. Bantam, UK, hc, 1992; Harper, US, hc, 1992. Add setting: England. [An agent pensioned off at the end of the Cold War sets up a syndicate of ruthless professionals up for hire.]

KENNEY, CHARLES (C.) 1950- . Began his writing career as a reporter for the Boston Globe; it was not until nearly 20 years later that he published his first crime thriller. Besides the two titles listed below, both included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, Kenney has also written The Last Man (Ballantine, 2001).

      _Code of Vengeance. Ballantine, pb, 1997. See Hammurabi’s Code.

      Hammurabi’s Code. Simon & Schuster, hc, 1995. Add: Reprinted as Code of Vengeance (Ballantine, 1997). Setting: Boston, MA. [When a liberal Boston councilman is murdered, investigative reporter Frank Cronin begins to learn the truth about him.]
      The Son of John Devlin. Ballantine, hc, 1999. Setting: Boston, MA. A Harvard University graduate goes undercover to investigate corruption in the Boston Police Department, hoping to clear his father’s name and restore his reputation.]

LEE, RACHEL. Pseudonym of Susan Civil-Brown & Christian Brown. Under this pen name, the author of several romantic suspense novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, as well as others published after 2000. Add the title below:

      Thunder Mountain. Silhouette, US, pb, 1994. [Silhouette Shadows #37.] Setting: Wyoming. [Mercy Kendrick is trapped on Thunder Mountain with a Native American hermit she can’t trust and men trying to track her down and kill her.]

PAULL, JESSYCA. Joint pseudonym of Julia Perceval & Rosaylmer Burger. Under this pen name, the authors of three books in a spy thriller series called “Passport to Danger.” Series characters in each: British agent Mike Thompson and his American fiancée, Tracy Larrimore.

      Destination: Terror. Award, pb, 1968. [#2.] Add settings: New York City, Luxembourg. [Tracy is kidnapped and shipped to the headquarters of the sadistic leader of an espionage ring.]

      Passport to Danger. Award, pb, 1968. [#1.] Setting: Paris. [Danger follows Tracy everywhere in Paris, where she is mistaken for a spy.]

      Rendezvous with Death. Award, pb, 1969. [#3.] Setting: Caribbean. “Two rival powers on a Caribbean island use a honeymoon couple as bait in a cat and mouse game of international espionage.”

   Based on an overall favorable review in Barzun & Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime, I read Anne Hocking’s Death Disturbs Mr. Jefferson (1950). Solicitor Jefferson is found dead in bed, and it soon becomes apparent that someone had put a ringer in his bottle of sleeping pills.

   At first, Jefferson seems to be an estimable character – he had no use for people and lives only for his glass collection – but it is discovered that he has been supporting his hobby/habit by blackmail on the basis of documents entrusted to him professionally.

   At this point the reader is all on the side of the murderer. In a good touch, Ms. Hocking has overcome our misplaced running with the hare by making the culprit one of the blackmailees.

   Most of the detection is ordinary policework and elimination of suspects because they aren’t “capable” of the crime. There is little action – even the killer is collared offstage.

   Not bad, not good.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA: [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

ANN HOCKING – Death Disturbs Mr. Jefferson. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1950. Geoffrey Bles, UK, hardcover, 1951.

CHIEF INSPECTOR WILLIAM AUSTEN. Author: Anne Hocking, pseudonym of Mona Messer Hocking, (1890-1966).

Ill Deeds Done (n.) Bles 1938 [England]
The Little Victims Play (n.) Bles 1938 [England]
Old Mrs. Fitzgerald (n.) Bles 1939 [England]  US title: Deadly Is the Evil Tongue.
So Many Doors (n.) Bles 1939 [Cyprus]
The Wicked Flee (n.) Bles 1940 [England]
Miss Milverton (n.) Bles 1941 [England]  US title: Poison Is a Bitter Brew
Night’s Candles (n.) Bles 1941 [Cyprus]
One Shall Be Taken (n.) Bles 1942 [England]
Nile Green (n.) Bles 1943 [Cairo]  US title: Death Leaves a Shining Mark.

Six Green Bottles (n.) Bles 1943 [England]
The Vultures Gather (n.) Bles 1945 [England]
Death at the Wedding (n.) Bles 1946 [England]
Prussian Blue (n.) Bles 1947 [England]  US title: The Finishing Touch.
At “The Cedars” (n.) Bles 1949 [England]
Death Disturbs Mr. Jefferson (n.) Bles 1951 [London]
Mediterranean Murder (n.) Evans 1951 [Spain; Ship]  US title: Killing Kin.
The Best Laid Plans (n.) Bles 1952 [England]

There’s Death in the Cup (n.) Evans 1952 [England]
Death Among the Tulips (n.) Allen 1953 [England]
The Evil That Men Do (n.) Allen 1953 [England]
And No One Wept (n.) Allen 1954 [England]

Poison in Paradise (n.) Allen 1955 [England]
A Reason for Murder (n.) Allen 1955 [England]
Murder at Mid-Day (n.) Allen 1956 [Spain]
Relative Murder (n.) Allen 1957 [England]
The Simple Way of Poison (n.) Allen 1957 [Oxford]

Epitaph for a Nurse (n.) Allen 1958 [England]  US title: A Victim Must Be Found.
Poisoned Chalice (n.) Long 1959 [England]
To Cease Upon the Midnight (n.) Long 1959 [England]
The Thin-Spun Life (n.) Long 1960 [England]
Candidates for Murder (n.) Long 1961 [England]
He Had to Die (n.) Long 1962 [England]
Murder Cries Out (n.) Long 1968 [England]